


Somewhere All Bright and New

by cinderfell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Critical Role Relationship Week, F/F, Flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderfell/pseuds/cinderfell
Summary: Pike's gardening woes end up landing her a curious new friend.Or, the one where Pike and Keyleth flirt with flowers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what it is about pikeleth fics but they're always meant to be super short and then get extremely out of hand. also, it's about time i finally wrote something concrete for my modern magic college au.
> 
> song title comes from "wildflowers" by tom petty

Pike is used to late night emergency calls.

She’s lived with her Papa since she was little, so neighbors knocking on their door because they didn’t want to go to the hospital or couldn’t in the first place has always been a basic part of her life. Wilhand was the first of their long family line to inherit the gift of healing magic and also the first to pull away from the Trickfoot family’s ties to the shadier underbelly of things.

(“But what did our family used to _do_?” Pike had pressed one night over dinner when she was in high school, frowning down at her plate.

“Gambling, larceny, bribery,” he’d rattled off in response, and when she opened her mouth to probe more he rolled right over her. “Arson, money laundering, tax evasion, public nudity. A lot of activity with the local gangs,”

“Oh,” is all Pike remembers saying because, honestly, what other thing could a seventeen year old possibly say to that? What other thing could _any_ sane person of any age possibly say to that?)

Wilhand took his branch of the family out of the shadows and into the light. He became a doctor, his skills as a healer making him all the more valuable, while working his own magic in the comfort of his own home for folks with nowhere else to go. Sickness, broken bones, skinned knees on little kids; Wilhand took them all in and healed them up for no cost-- which is not to say his patients didn’t pay him back in some way. Pike can’t even begin to count the number of times they were invited to their neighbors’ houses for dinner, or they were brought homemade food, or they had housework done for free.

Nobody was surprised when Pike showed an aptitude for healing magic like her Papa-- except for maybe Wilhand himself. When Wilhand found her healing a bird with a broken wing he’d almost cried from pride. As she got older, her magical talents only grew stronger. Wilhand taught her all he knew, and by the time Pike hit her freshmen year of high school, he’d exhausted all his knowledge of healing magic only for Pike’s magic to continue flourishing.

Wilhand’s specialty when it comes to healing magic is fixing broken bones.

Pike’s, she discovers in college, is hangover cures.

(Listen, not all magic is prim and proper, okay? And she’s rather proud of it if she’s being honest-- it isn’t some by-the-book spell she learned from Wilhand or one she found in one of the many dusty textbooks on healing magic she studied when younger, it’s homebrewed magic of her own concoction. A mix of magic that she uses for migraines and magic for nauseousness usually does the trick, but depending on the intensity of the hangover she may have to toss a little something extra in there too. Her buddy Grog usually needs the heavier dose, Gods bless him.)

Grog, as it turns out, is the reason for many of her late night emergency calls.

This one, though, isn’t for him.

When she opens the front door after hearing his heavy, telltale knocking, the last thing she expects to find is a tall, clearly out of it woman with bright red hair hanging off of Grog’s shoulder.

“Uh,” is all she manages to get out, because… well, what else is there really to say?

“My friend here ain’t in a good place, Pike.” Grog gestures at the woman without saying hello. “You mind lookin’ at her?”

“I mean,” Pike shakes her head and blinks. “Sure?”

It’s not like she’s going to say no to that, right?

“Oy, stay awake now,” he says, voice soft as he talks to the girl as he walks her in through the threshold and into the actual house. “Pike’s gonna check out your head, Keyleth.”

The girl makes a noncommittal groan. She’s obviously drunk and, judging by the bright red bump growing on her forehead, she took a pretty nasty fall at some point in the last hour.

“What happened to her?” Pike asks, ushering Grog over to the couch so he can gingerly drop her onto it. As big and burly of a man as Grog is, he’s always gentle enough when it counts. It’s part of what she likes about him so much.

(Kindred spirits, Wilhand had called them when he met Grog for the first time. Grog is big and gruff and soft if needed, while Pike is small and sweet but willing to put the fear of Sarenrae in somebody if necessary.)

“She tried to do a kegstand and fucked up,” Grog answers, letting Keyleth grapple his arm even as Pike steps up to start checking her out. When Pike gives him a questioning look, Grog shrugs. “Keyleth likes to party.”

Well, Pike really can’t judge anyone when she’s guilty of getting a little too carried away at times too.

“Did you guys walk here?”

“Nah, Vex was sober so she drove. Her and Vax are waiting outside.”

Pike doesn’t know all of Grog’s friends, although she’s been slowly starting to meet them-- usually through circumstances similar to this, give or take a few details. One of them does something silly or stupid and they can’t go to the hospital for whatever reason-- it’s usually money, honestly, and she can’t blame them-- so Grog just brings them to her. The twins were kind of a package deal, a two for one bargain. She met them a few months back when Vax bit off a little bit more than he could chew and got his ass kicked for being a bit of a shit.

(“Leave him something to remember it by,” Grog had suggested after dragging the other man onto their couch.

“Grog!” she’d snapped, and Vax had glared daggers at the big guy over her shoulder.

“Fix him but leave him a little sore,” Vex had said dryly as she brushed her brother’s hair out of his face. “Maybe then he’ll learn his lesson and stop picking fights with people that are bigger than him.”

It was the start of a lovely friendship.)

“I’ll try to make this quick, then.” She gives the redhead an apologetic smile. “Tell me if you’re going to puke.”

Keyleth doesn’t puke, thank Sarenrae, but she does, as she suspects, have a minor concussion. Concussions are tricky to treat with healing magic, but luckily for Pike she has all the components in the house for a safer, more advanced treatment. Keyleth responds well to the magic, and after twenty minutes-- and a trip to check in with the twins outside-- Pike feels confident enough to call it fixed.

She helps Grog lift her up and walk her out of the house and down the path towards the car where the twins are waiting, reaching out a hand to steady her. Keyleth seems much more aware of her surrounding compared to when she arrived, although she’s still incredibly fucking wasted. There’s not much Pike can do about that problem, not when the alcohol is still so fresh in her system.

“It was nice to meet you,” Pike says, feeling more than a little drained after using up so much magic. She pats Keyleth on the arm. “You should probably take it easy on the kegstands and stuff in the future.”

Her patient doesn’t actually respond to her question, her eyes fixed firmly behind Pike. Confused, Pike swivels around and finds only her unruly front yard. When she speaks, Keyleth’s voice shakes just slightly, and Pike can’t tell if it’s from the drunkenness or the exhaustion from receiving and recovering from a concussion so quickly or… or what. “Is that your garden?”

Pike raises an eyebrow at Grog-- who shrugs, still holding Keyleth around the waist to keep her from falling over-- and then looks up at Keyleth. “Yes?”

Keyleth, for whatever reason, promptly bursts into tears.

“Oh Gods,” Pike whispers, frantically looking between the crying woman and her friend, who seems equally perplexed. “What did I do?”

“Beats me,” Grog says.

“It’s all dead and ugly,” Keyleth whines, her face nearly as red as her hair.

It takes a moment for it to click, but when it does Pike’s eyebrow raises even higher if possible. “My garden? Are you talking about my garden?”

Keyleth starts to cry even harder.

“Okay, drunky,” Grog rubs Keyleth’s shoulder soothingly with his free hand and she nuzzles closer to him, burying her face in his side. “Time to get you home.”

Altogether, it’s a pretty weird night. Pike puts away the textbook she was reading when she heard Grog knock on her door, unable to focus anymore, and crawls into bed. She allows exhaustion to consume her, as it often does when she uses too much of her magic at once.

When she comes outside to get the paper the next morning, she comes face to face with a familiar woman kneeling in her garden. The woman startles when the front door opens, looking up at Pike with wide golden eyes. They both stare at each other in silence for a long moment, Pike very much feeling like she’s intruding on something (despite it being _her_ garden) and the woman-- Keyleth?-- looking like a deer in the headlights.

All Pike manages to get out is, “You’re the drunk girl who cried over my garden last night.”

The redhead winces. “Wow, that… that sure is a thing to be known for, alright.”

“You’re also the drunk girl who gave herself a concussion trying to do a kegstand,” Pike offers, and Keyleth winces again.

“That’s worse.”

“It is,” Pike agrees, carefully walking down the steps and coming to stand next to where Keyleth still kneels. As weird as this is, the woman definitely doesn’t seem like a threat or anything. “So, what are you doing in my garden?”

“Drunk me was really upset with your garden,” Keyleth says, clearly embarrassed.

“So I recall,” Pike laughs.

“And you were nice enough to fix me up for free when you didn’t even know me, and I kind of felt guilty about that, so I figured that maybe I could fix up your garden as payment.” She shrugs, bashfully looking down at the gnarled flowerbed.

Pike can’t help but feel a little touched, as weird as it is to wake up to find a strange woman crouched in her shitty little garden. It reminds her of their neighbors doing yardwork for Wilhand as thank you for healing. “Oh! Well, you don’t have to worry about paying me back. I do stuff like this all the time! And besides, any friend of Grog’s is a friend of mine.”

Keyleth’s eyes harden slightly then, a look of determination settling in her gaze and she looks back up at Pike. “No, really, I insist.”

“No, _I_ insist,” Pike assures, only for the woman to purse her lips up at her.

“Look,” Keyleth says, raising up from her knees-- bits of grass and dirt crumble off of her bare skin and fall back to the ground-- and onto her feet, her voice earnest. “I would feel really, really guilty just letting this go and not doing anything in return, and I would also feel really, really, _really_ guilty just leaving this poor garden the way that it is, so please, please, please, please, _please_ let me do this one thing for you. And then I will be out of your hair.”

Pike considers her for a moment-- there’s really no downside to letting this happen, as far as she can tell-- then gives a small, easy-going shrug. “Alright.” The woman brightens up immediately, and Pike immediately chimes in with, “Just promise me you won’t spend any money or anything on it.”

“Promise!” Keyleth says excitedly, and Pike’s almost taken aback when she holds out her hand, her pinky finger extended. It takes her a moment to register what Keyleth’s trying to get her to do, but when she realizes she can’t help but laugh.

“Alright,” she says again, hooking her pinky finger with Keyleth’s. The other woman looks absolutely overjoyed. “You were pretty wasted last night--”

“And concussed,” Keyleth chimes in as she drops her hand.

“And concussed,” Pike agrees. “So we didn’t really get a formal introduction. I’m Pike.”

“Keyleth,” she says, and Pike can’t help but think the name sounds much prettier coming from the lips of its owner. “So, wanna get started right away?”

“Be my guest.”

She expects Keyleth to maybe run home and get fertilizer-- she seems like the kind of person to keep fertilizer and other gardening equipment handy at her home at all times-- or trim the overgrown plants, maybe weed her garden for her. What she doesn’t expect is for Keyleth to rattle off a list of basic household ingredients (sugar, salt, etc.) and gather them in bowls in front of Pike’s garden, sitting crisscross-applesauce just at the edge of the dirt.

Pike gets even more lost as Keyleth waves her hands in elaborate patterns, green energy sparkling around her fingers as whatever she’s channeling consumes the ingredients in front of her and pours it back out into the garden. The effects are almost instantaneous, the plants and flowers perking up and growing more and more colorful. Weeds that once poked through the flowers and strangled the life from them wither and die, turning to dust before breaking off into the light spring breeze. In a matter of minutes the garden is very, very different.

Whatever Keyleth just did, it’s clearly magic. She knows of magic related to nature-- has seen it done before-- but there’s something different about the way Keyleth casts, something strange and charming and almost wild about it.

“Holy shit,” is all Pike can muster.

Keyleth lets out a breathless little laugh. “So? What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Pike repeats, baffled. “That was amazing! It looks _amazing_.”

Bright pink rises to Keyleth cheeks at the compliment. “Well, thank you very much! I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting that.”

“Where did you learn that?” Pike asks excitedly, now dropping to her knees in the dirt next to Keyleth. “I mean, I’ve seen nature magic before but never like that.”

Keyleth gives her a timid smile. “I grew up with the Ashari. Our magic is a little bit different than city magic.”

Pike knows _of_ the Ashari, although she’s never actually met one before or had the chance to study their magic. The Ashari live outside of the cities for the most part and form self-sustaining communities usually based around agriculture and oneness with nature. They practice and preserve Old Magic, ancient and unruly magic that’s been lost to many outside of the Ashari. Old Magic is more powerful than most magic used in mainstream society-- new age magic, city magic. While Old Magic is passed down almost unchanging, unyielding from generation to generation, city magic is more malleable and easier to pick up-- although you still have to have a gift for magic to wield it in even its most basic forms.

It’s rare to find Ashari leaving their closed off communities, so Keyleth is a bit of a curious exception, although Pike decides not to pry.

If Pike’s eyes go wide, she can’t help it. “Woah.”

Keyleth laughs again. “You act like it’s something impressive. You clearly have magic of your own.”

“Yeah, but mine isn’t anything like that.” Pike wiggles her fingers, a brief spark of yellow energy twinkling at the fingertips. “Mine’s all about healing.”

“Mine’s about healing too, just for plants instead of people.” She reaches up a hand to brush a wild strand of red hair back behind a pointed ear. “Although I do have some knowledge on spellcasting related to healing people, I’m just not very good at it. Do you not have any for plants?”

Pike shakes her head. “Just people. It doesn’t help that I kill practically every plant I touch.”

“I can tell,” Keyleth says, then proceeds to go even redder. She blushes easily, Pike notices. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make that sound rude or anything!”

She laughs. “It’s fine! I made fun of myself first. I know how bad I am with plants.”

“Oh, good.” Keyleth looks relieved, another soft, nervous laugh fluttering out from between her pink lips like butterflies. “I guess you could say I have a bit of green thumb-- I love gardening. If you ever need any help with your garden or plants or anything, literally just hit me up.”

A soft smile creeps across Pike’s face. “You know what? I might just take you up on that offer, Keyleth.”

She pulls her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants and hands it over to Keyleth so she can put her number in. Keyleth punches it in and gives the phone back to her with a timid smile. “Well, I should probably go home. I kind of came out here on a whim and I have a paper to work on still.”

Pike laughs a little wearily, her own homework that she put off to the side after last night still burning in the back of her mind. “Trust me, I know the feeling.” After a second thought, she adds as kindly as possible, “Just as a heads up, maybe next time you want to help somebody out you should knock on their door and ask them instead of crouching in their front garden.”

Keyleth covers her face. “Oh, Gods, I did do that, didn’t I?”

“You did,” she confirms apologetically, reaching out to touch the other woman’s shoulder in what she hopes is a reassuring manner. It seems to work, because Keyleth slowly raises her burning face from her hands to look at her. “You still a little hungover?”

Keyleth simply groans in response, and Pike snorts.

“Yeah, I figured.” Pike gets to her feet and brushes herself off, reaching down to offer Keyleth a hand. “Why don’t you come inside before you head home? I can make you some tea and do something about your hangover.”

Keyleth gladly accepts her hand, and she seems more than a little surprised by the strength of Pike’s grip as she tugs the much taller woman up. She looks down at Pike curiously. “Wait, can you really do something about my hangover?”

Pike snaps her fingers and grins widely. “It’s actually my specialty.”

Keyleth lets out a breathy, “Awesome.”

Her relationship with Keyleth gets off to a weird start, but from then on it’s pretty smooth sailing. Keyleth comes over twice in the next two weeks-- just to check in on the flowers, she says-- and helps Pike flesh out her garden and groom it into something lovely. Smatterings of blue and yellow flowers intertwine together, the garden bright and healthy against the white of the Trickfoot house.

Wilhand spends a lot of his time sleeping these days, but he seems to like Keyleth a lot when he pokes his head out when she’s inside the house one day and finds the two women eating donuts that Pike picked up from the bakery specifically for Keyleth’s visit. Pike can’t exactly pinpoint why that matters to her, but it’s nice.

Well, it’s smooth sailing up until a certain point.

Two weeks turns into a month, and then two months, and then Pike finds Keyleth over at her home nearly every other day. When Keyleth declares her a suitable plant mom, Pike feels pretty damn proud. The next day Keyleth turns up with a potted plant under each arm, one full of violets and the other a gardenia.

“These are your children now,” Keyleth says simply as she hands them over to Pike, who stares down at them in confusion. “You’re going to take care of them all on your own, no magical help from me.”

Keyleth doesn’t come over for a week, supposedly to give Pike time to adjust to taking care of the flowers herself. Pike finds herself missing her friend’s company on the second day-- simply seeing each other in passing and texting doesn’t fill the needy ache Pike feels without spending time with Keyleth. They get coffee together on the third day without hanging out at Pike’s house, then drinks on the fourth.

(Keyleth is adorable if not a little sloppy when drunk, Pike finds. The concussion from their first meeting was not, in fact, the cause of both of those things like she’d assumed at the time. She keeps an eye on Keyleth when they drink, and she crashes at Keyleth’s cramped apartment after. She pretends not to feel the sweet fluttering in her chest when she wakes up in Keyleth’s bed the next morning, both of them still fully clothed. She pretends not to feel the way her heartbeat rings in her ears when she feels her friend’s arm slung around her middle, her red hair splayed across the mint green pillows.)

For the rest of the week she finds herself spending as much time with the other woman as she possibly can, and Pike tries to fool herself into thinking it’s just because she enjoys Keyleth’s friendship, but…

Well, Pike has never been a very good liar, even to herself.

When Keyleth sees the potted flowers she left with her at the end of the week, Pike fears that the poor woman is about to have a heart attack. She can’t exactly blame her. The flowers in the actual garden held up just fine under Pike’s care, no doubt because they were strengthened by Keyleth’s Ashari magic. The potted plants, however, received no such magical treatment and suffered the full force of Pike’s bad luck with plants.

“I’m not very good at this,” Pike laughs sadly as she looks over the dead flowers. “I even watered them and everything!”

Keyleth squints down at the pots and the obviously unhappy flowers, now between the two women on the grass as they sit just in front of the garden. “Pike, did you overwater these by chance?”

Pike cocks her head to the side. “You can overwater flowers?”

Keyleth purses her lips together. “Well, that’s a conversation we’ll have to have later.”

Pike drops her head into her hands. “Shit. I messed up the flowers you got me. I’m really sorry, Keyleth.”

Keyleth immediately starts waving away Pike’s apology. “No, no! It’s no problem! See, watch--” She grabs the pot closest to her, the one that holds wilted violets, and wiggles her fingers over them. With a soft crackling of energy, the violets brighten and return to their original beautiful bloom. She holds it out to Pike so she can see. “Look! They’re just fine now.”

She restores the gardenia while Pike watches, and Pike finds herself incredibly grateful for her friend’s ability to save the poor things that she ruined.

“Ooh, I almost forgot!” Keyleth jumps to her feet, startling Pike, and she watches as Keyleth runs off to the other side of the yard where she leaned her mint green bike again the side of the house. She pulls something from the cute little white basket on the front of the bike, cradling it in her arms as she carries it over to where they’re sitting. She drops back down next to Pike, tucking her legs underneath her as she sits. This close, Pike can make out every freckle dotting Keyleth’s cheeks, every freckle that trails down her neck and across her shoulders.

“It’s another potted plant,” Pike says with a raised eyebrow as she looks at what Keyleth retrieved.

“Kind of,” Keyleth agrees and hands it to Pike, who turns the pot around in her hands and tilts her head as she inspects it. “There’s nothing in it but dirt, but I figured I could change that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve been at this for a while and I’ve always sort of been the one to pick out flowers for you.” She nudges the pot full of dirt with the back of her hand. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of flower you’d want in your garden? And I’ll take extra care to keep this one alive, regardless of you being a misfortunate flower killer.”

Pike laughs at that, then squints down at the dirt. “Uh, I don’t know, Keyleth. Anything?”

“Anything,” Keyleth reaffirms.

“That’s a lot of things to choose from,” Pike says with a chuckle, running through flowers in her head. They’re all lovely, but none of them really… oh. Wait. Hold on a moment. “How about a daffodil?”

Keyleth absolutely lights up at the suggestion, clapping her hands together in excitement. “Ooh, excellent choice, Pike!”

Keyleth begins slowly, almost coaxing the flower she’s creating into existence. Green, glittering sparks of magic dance between her fingers like electricity; there’s definitely something almost primal about this magic compared to her healing magic, something wild and untamed and undeniably ancient, drawing on centuries of pulsating energy that Pike almost swears she can feel as Keyleth casts.

“You know Pike, flowers lean towards sunlight because they want to grow strong and beautiful,” Keyleth says with a happy sigh, almost trancelike in her fixation on the pot as her fingers move in the air. Pike’s lips part into a soft O as a tendril of green pushes up and out of the dirt, growing bigger and bigger until it blossoms into a bright yellow flower. Keyleth lets out a slow hum of approval as she lets her hands drop back down to her lap, leaning forward slightly to inspect the plant she just brought to life. Her golden eyes are soft. “Just like you.”

Pike thinks she misheard for a moment, then plays what Keyleth said back in her head and uh, yep. _Yep._

She snaps to attention. “What did you just say?”

Keyleth blinks, looking almost a little dazed, like she always does after letting herself get lost in her own magic. “What?”

“About flowers wanting to be strong and beautiful… like me?”

Keyleth’s complexion goes ruddy in an instant and she nervously clasps her hands together, her fingers wound tightly between each other. “Haha, did I say that?”

“I think you did,” Pike says, gently setting the potted flower down next to her. “Do you want me to pretend I didn’t hear it?”

Keyleth bites down on her lip. “I mean, do you want to pretend you didn’t hear it?”

“This feels like a very circular conversation we’re about to throw ourselves into, Keyleth.”

“It does feel like that,” Keyleth agrees. They sit in silence for a long moment, Keyleth looking down at her hands while Pike looks at Keyleth’s face. Finally, Keyleth lets out a sad, nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I speak before I think. It’s a real problem and I’m really sorry to dump something you don’t want on you.”

“Who says I don’t want it?” Pike counters, keeping her voice soft as she speaks, almost scared to frighten her off as if she were a flighty forest creature.

Keyleth blinks and looks up at her. “What?”

“Who says I don’t want to hear that you think I’m apparently strong and beautiful?” A gentle heat raises to Pike’s cheeks. “Because it’s definitely not… unwelcome.”

“Oh,” Keyleth says.

Oh indeed.

Before she second guesses herself, Pike reaches over and places her hand on Keyleth’s. The other woman startles, freezing up at the touch-- but then again, it’s hard to use the word freezing when it comes to Keyleth when she’s so… warm. After a moment, Keyleth turns her hand over so she can thread their fingers together and Pike feels a burst of sunlight from her chest.

It’s wonderful in a way that Pike has trouble describing; like she won a prize, like she just got the best news of her life.

It’s also remarkably simple in the best kind of way. The world narrows down to the brush of her hand against Keyleth’s, the warmth of her skin and the softness of it all. They both sit there quietly for a moment, both taking it in.

“Hey, I’m about to tell you something really embarrassing,” Keyleth says finally, turning her head so she’s staring straight down at the ground again.

Pike quirks an eyebrow at her. “What’s that?”

“I literally looked up the meanings of flowers online and picked out those flowers for the potted plants based on what the internet told me they meant in the language of flowers.”

A laugh startles out from Pike, a loud one that makes Keyleth’s head dip down a little bit more. Pike squeezes down on Keyleth’s hand and gets a soft squeeze back. “That’s not embarrassing, Keyleth, that’s sweet!”

“It’s a _little_ embarrassing,” Keyleth counters, but raises her head again so she can look at Pike. A timid, lovely smile is spread across her face.

“No, it’s perfect.”

And Pike leans over and kisses her softly, a laugh caught between their lips as they meet.

**Author's Note:**

> the end scene is based off of [this adorable art by thegoldenlocks](http://thegoldenlocks.tumblr.com/post/146609505230/hear-me-out-keyleth-is-only-good-at-flirting), and a line from this fic is taken directly from it <3


End file.
